[Games] Hax Deadroom: 20 Minutes Into the Past!
Even if nobody in my player group is familiar with the old 1980s "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future) TV series -- and one player didn't even know who Max Headroom was -- the basic cyberpunk and media-crazy concept seems compelling enough that I THINK I could sell it as a game concept. I just need NOT to waste time trying to bring players up to speed on a TV show they'd never seen, and which doesn't matter terribly anyway (save that if someone HAD seen it, I could go, "Hey, remember that old 1980s TV show starring Max Headroom? I'm blatantly ripping off elements from that.").
My thought is that I'll bill it as something more generic. Say, "Savage Cyberpunk: 20 Minutes Into the Future!" And then for my banner, I might cobble together some graphics that evoke the feeling of the "Max Headroom" look (i.e., caution stripes, random "neon" lines against a dark background on a "retro-futuristic" CRT screen...), but I won't demand player knowledge of it to get up to speed.
I think maybe something like this:
In the distant dystopian future of the year 2000 (as imagined from the 1980s or 1990s), the world is ruled by media megacorporations who dwarf the influence of governments with their pervasive influence over public opinion. Networked vid-screens are everywhere, not only offering mindless entertainment and tailored "news," but quietly monitoring the populace as well. So, the only rival to a media megacorporation's power is another media megacorporation, and the competition can come down to life or death.
The protagonists are the cyber-enhanced stars and support crew for a weeknight "hyper-reality" hour-long slot on Network 23, following the adventures of a pair of vigilantes (and their frequently replaced "comic relief" sidekick) as they fight crime and trade one-liners. Tonight's mission involves rescuing some hostages from some inept terrorists -- but more importantly they've got ratings to maintain, and sponsors to please. The support crew decides when to time a commercial break, where to move the camera drones, and sometimes even to secretly "spice things up" if it's been a little too long between firefights and the ratings need a boost. Is it time to risk life and limb for a product placement? Is that terrorist mugging for Camera Drone #1? And worst of all, what to do if the heroes are about to wrap things up only a half hour into the time slot?
This is meant to be a not-entirely-serious take on "old-school" dystopian cyberpunk (mohawks, chromed cyberware, seemingly perpetual nighttime, etc.) using the pulpy system of the Savage Worlds RPG, rewarding players who go all-out to do things with style, rather than just "shoot all the bad guys."
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I need to keep the pitch fairly brief. I could go deep into detail about all the PCs, but that would really bulk things out. Among a few PC concepts I have:
1) The former action-movie starlet: At 18, she's already considered "past her prime" by producers in the youth-obsessed media world, and she hasn't the funds for "body-sculpting" her way back into current fashion. She knows how to field-strip a rifle and point the gun the right way, but an arguably "bad" habit of racking the chamber (wasting a perfectly good shell) for dramatic emphasis, and engaging in other less-than-entirely-effective action-movie cliches. She isn't keen on making this a long-term gig; for her, this is a "temporary" arrangement until she can score something bigger. (Game terms: She has lots of presence and "people skills," great for short-term ratings boosts, but runs the risk of losing favor with the public if she is shown to be not as "real" of an action heroine as she seemed in the movies.)
2) The cyborg veteran: Technically, his military-grade (but obsolete) cybernetic body isn't even his own, essentially on indefinite "loan" to Network 23. The success of this show is literally a life-or-death matter for him, since if he gets decommissioned, there's no way he could afford his own maintenance. He's basically the mechanical "muscle" of the group, drawing upon his combat expertise and enhancements to take down the bad guys -- but he has to check himself to make sure he doesn't overshadow his partner (who's the far more charming and photogenic draw). His partner is still working on trying to coach him into throwing in a few witty one-liners, but the delivery is challenging with his near-monotone synthesized voice.
3) The wacky sidekick: The producers demand some "comic relief." The trouble is that when the first "wacky" sidekick met a grisly death, a significant part of the viewing audience thought that was the funniest thing he'd ever done. After a few other such on-screen "accidents," any new recruit to the part has good reason to suspect that this is a "short-term" gig in the worst way.
(Note: Depending on how we want to spin this, I might either give the "sidekick" player a whole STACK of sidekick replacement characters to go through, as needed ... or else this role might be relegated to an NPC.)
4) The drone rigger: This mechanical ace has cybernetic link-ups to a handful of remote-controlled camera drones at any given time, with a crate of backups back in the van for when (inevitably) someone starts blasting them out of the sky. Although all the camera feeds go back to the network, and the station crew has ultimate control over what gets broadcast (with actual broadcast happening on a slight delay, to allow for any necessary censorship), it's up to the rigger to use his best judgement to priority-flag the preferred feed ... and in some cases, "black out" any signals that might be showing something not favorable to the group's ambitions. (E.g., a camera drone picking up on some street tough making a rude gesture to it, or a perhaps too graphic scene of the aftermath of a gruesome death.)
5) The fixer: This is the guy with the connections, with the budget, ready to place bribes, make concierge requests, place flash bounties, etc., to keep things rolling. He's something of the "hacker" of the group, making spot decisions, using connections to make sure that vid-screen in the background isn't showing an ad for the sponsor's direct rival, surreptitiously provoking some punks in an online chat room to show up and cause some trouble so we can splice in a bit of "action," etc.
(Note: However, this "role" might well be divided across the support team. I don't know if it's too specialized.)
6) The sniper: This fellow makes up for the starlet's lack of proper marksmanship via trick shots, coordinating with the camera drones to make sure nothing shows up in the broadcast to give away the game.
(Note: It's possible that this role could be combined with the "Fixer." So, the "Fixer" might be making all these calls, but he might also be getting directly involved if need be. While it might be interesting to have someone whose primary skills are "sneak" and "wacky trick shots," it might be a little too "one-note" to keep a player entertained.)
7) The rogue digital personality: Hax Deadroom, Mex Hadroom, Mad Hexroom, Hux Mushroom, or whatever -- basically, a blatant rip-off of Max Headroom, in a desperate bid to cash in on the ratings-boosting popularity of Max Headroom, while trying to make him a little more controlled and less of the "free agent" that the original Max is.
(Note: As a digital personality, he'd be rather challenging to stat out. He could more-or-less hop from screen to screen, and potentially give the players up-to-date positioning information on the bad guys. One can only suppose that the vid screens are durable enough that the terrorists can't just shoot them out to stop them from tracking {or that their ulterior motives prevent them from so quickly destroying the "digital personality's" means of movement}.)
I plan on just having 6 player slots, though I might have more character sheets handy for some slight options (e.g., perhaps male and female versions of the primary "star" characters). I need to be prepared for the possibility that I might have a low turnout and hence fewer than 6. (In that case, I'm almost certain to turn one of the "star" roles into an NPC, so I can make sure we've got some division between "star" and "support." However, I suppose the scenario could still play out even if we had all stars and relegated support to NPCs, or if everyone played support, while the so-called "heroes" were actually NPCs -- who could only freely communicate with the PCs to work out further instructions during limited commercial breaks.)
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As for complications, I think it'd be kind of cool if there were some way to play with the standard "hostage situation," where the hostages might well NOT be tied up and gagged, but perhaps they've got some sort of devices that trap them in a virtual reality or "hyper-reality," so they don't even know how to get out (or perhaps don't care to). It just wouldn't be a "wireless hack" -- it'd be something like some device physically plugged into their "cortex jacks" or whatever.
I'll probably have the entire "action area" mapped out and shown to the players as part of their planning phase. If there's a "digital personality," he could essentially reveal the whole map to the PCs anyway ... and he'd need some sort of idea of where he can go, given his ability to "teleport" from screen to screen for all intents and purposes.
In any case, I don't want the terrorist motivations to be too close to real-world concerns and politics.
Possible twists:
- Weird Terrorist Motivations: Maybe these are people so media-obsessed they're deliberately staging this just so they can get taken down by their favorite Network 23 stars. The trouble is that we've got a "fourth wall" to maintain for this show, so if the terrorists start crying out stuff like, "I love you, {TV starlet}! Shoot me first!" the drone operators are going to have their hands full bleeping that out and altering the footage to obscure it.
- Annoying Sponsorship Demands / Product Placements: A crate of Product X getting airlifted right into the middle of a firefight. A demand that our hero spend a round sipping "Product X" while the bullets are flying. (This would look quite silly if it's the cyborg trying to do it.) A sudden request from the producers to add more of a "romance" element, as they've noticed that viewers of a certain demographic have tuned in because (some random celebrity on a talk show mentioned the starlet and her show), and they think this might keep them tuned in for longer and score some more advertiser cred. (But all we have is a full-body cyborg and an annoying comic-relief sidekick who probably isn't long for the world anyway. Where do you suddenly get a "love interest" before the next commercial break?) Etc.
- Ratings Rewards: I might try to anticipate various action-movie (especially 1980s-1990s) cliches and hand out little "ratings rewards" the first time someone does them. E.g., for the first "painfully-delivered action-movie one-liner" or "walk away from an explosion" or "take out two bad guys with one shot" or "beat them with their own kind" or whatever. I might involve the players by inspiring them to think of NEW cliche categories that should be included. This is kind of like what I did with my old "Buck-Rogers-Meets-Flash-Gordon-Meets-Commander-Cody-Meets-Crash-Corrigan-etc." over-the-top rocketships-and-rayguns game, with people going for old-school Star Trek or Buck Rogers cliches and really hamming it up (including getting other players to try to "sing" the Star Trek fight music when one of the heroes tossed his raygun aside to go mano-a-alieno against a four-armed giant blue alien ... and managed to punch him out -- yay!).
- Rival Network Sabotage: Perhaps a "Max Headroom" digital personality tries to "vid-bomb" the show by showing up on vid screens in the background of action scenes, so the camera guy has to make painful decisions to switch to another camera rather than giving the rival personality too much face-time. Or a rival "fixer" tricks some bystanders into wandering onto the "set" (AKA firefight).
Anyway, I don't want any "complications" to be game-breakers. I just want to have a bunch of situations handy to toss in that I hope will inspire the players toward problem-solving ... or at least make things more "interesting." I'm still working out details in my head.